Ah no (sorry) - I am just using a PlayStation - I don’t have to switch off eARC on the C9 TV however in order to play DTS 5.1 audio - that codec works with eARC either ‘on’ or ‘off’ and I just leave it enabled for that and obviously for the Mc-LPCM (lossless) audio too.

I’m assuming everyone with this setup got this issue sorted now?

Hi Community,

I am sort of having the same problem what others have described in this thread, albeit having slightly different equipement: I own a LG OLED55BX9LB TV, connected to a Sonos Beam. Some time ago, I bought a Panasonic DP-UB820 4K Blu-ray Player and would like to play my existing Blu-rays with the 5.1 DTS Sound on the discs - hoping that I can somehow tweak my settings from the Panasonic Blu-ray, that the Sonos Beam is playing it with transcoded 5.1 Multichannel PCM.

I tried already all kinds of settings, but whatever I choose, I end up with the crappy Stereo PCM sound. I know that the LG OLED55BX9LB (as most other recent LG TVs) do not support DTS passthrough ... but isn't there a way that I pass the sound as raw "Bitstream" from the Blu-ray Player so that the Sonos Beam is then playing it as 5.1 Multichannel? I read through this thread, but I’m a little lost. Some apparently have figured it out, some did not … ?

Here is how I connected my setup (TV, Blu-ray and Beam all running the latest available software updates as of 18th Jan. 2024):

1. LG OLED55BX9LB connected on eARC/ARC with Sonos HDMI cable to Sonos Beam
2. TV Audio set to ARC
3. Panasonic DP-UB820 Blu-ray connected on HDMI 2.1 Port of TV via 2.1 HDMI cable

I screenshotted all relevant (I think) settings from the Blu-ray player, please see attached files from a session where I had a DTS disc in use. Somehow I feel like I am getting lost in the settings and I'm not sure if I made a mistake somewhere which I overlook.

So my question to others who are using a similar setup: is there a way to overcome the "DTS passthrough burden" with this LG TV and the Panasonic Blu-ray player, to have the Blu-rays play with 5.1 sound?

I highly appreciate any tips, hints or feedback! 

@fabian,

Rtings show these codecs supported by the TV…

So there’s no DTS 5.1 or McPCM option either (assuming it’s a Beam gen 2) - so I don’t think you’ll find success with that TV - at least that’s my guess, but you could probably achieve success by bypassing the TV with an audio extractor, like the HDFury Arcana etc, but there are some cheaper options on the market too if you’re just looking to get DTS 5.1 audio to your Beam. Maybe checkout Amazon for such ‘compatible’ audio extractors.

In the mean time try setting Downmix in your first screenshot to surround encoded and bump up the volume in your surrounds a touch. I get some surround info with my Playbase that way with DTS tracks. DTS X doesn't need the volume bump as much for some reason.

@fabian The DTS/DTS-HD setting on the UB820 needs to be set to PCM to get Multichannel PCM audio.

 Appreciate your input and help!

@Ken_Griffiths: yes, it’s the Beam 2 (should have mentioned it first). I heard about the HDFury Arcana (I have not looked in detail into it), but always thought that it’s primarily for users with a TV that does not have an ARC (or eARC) capable HDMI port - which my LG BX has, despite lacking the DTS passthrough. I’m not sure if want to invest another 250$ “just” for that. Is there any recommendation on any cheaper device that you can give? I was really hoping to somehow solve this with tweaking the Audio Settings in my setup - specifically with my Blu-ray player.

@Silverthorn: unfortunately, changing “Downmix” to “Surround encoded” did not help either. Still says “Stereo PCM” when I play my disc. I left all other settings as seen in my initial screenshot. The discs I am trying to play have just “normal” DTS, not DTS X. Here is a photo of the disc:

@GuitarSuperstar: tried also that: switching “Bitstream” to “PCM” for DTS/DTS-HD in the second screenshot. Still, Sonos App shows the sound as “Stereo PCM” when I play the disc.

I even tried both: setting it to “PCM” and changing Downmix to “Surround encoded”. Still no luck.

Anything else worth trying?

@fabian Does your TV have the latest firmware installed?

You misunderstood my post about the downmix option @fabian . Yes the Sonos app will still show stereo PCM but it will have a dolby pro logic style information added to it. I suggest you try it again and have a listen again to a good DTS soundtrack and put your head next to the one of the surrounds. It does work at least it does for me with my Playbase.

Dolby Surround Pro Logic is the full name that refers to the matrix surround format and decoding system in one. When a Dolby Surround soundtrack is created in post-production (Dolby MP Matrix), four channels of sound are matrix-encoded into an ordinary stereo (two-channel) soundtrack.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolby_Pro_Logic

Yes, 100%. I usually have it on auto-update and my LG BX is running v04.50.53, as of today. Panasonic Blu-ray player and Sonos system for Beam 2 also running latest update.

Interesting, sorry for my misunderstanding - I will give this of more thorough test later. Could you post a screenshot of how this exactly looks like in your Sonos app? Just to be sure: the only thing I would need to change in the settings from my posted screenshots is changing “Downmix” to “Surround encoded”? All the values under “Digital Audio Output” should (must?) be left as “Bitstream” … correct?

@fabian You could set the DTS setting in your second screenshot back to PCM rather Bitstream but I don’t know that it matters, my TV is also a Panasonic and I think the two play nicer together than another TV might so it might do. The app will just show Stereo PCM but get a disc with a good DTS track and find a good action scene. You should notice a difference. I would try with something a bit newer to test with and bump the volume of your surrounds a bit.

They added this quite some time ago. The first Divergent movie had a DTS based track and when I replayed it at some stage I notice I was getting a decent surround sound experience.

Thank you @Silverthorn for explaining. So basically, there is no indication on the Sonos app as “confirmation” (like it is when you e.g. hear Dolby variants, etc.), you can only confirm by closely listening. That would also mean changing back and forth between “Downmix” → “Surround encoded” and “Downmix” → “Stereo” should make a difference when listening, correct? I will give this a try. Just out of curiosity: did you find this out yourself or was this documented somewhere?

To give you a little broader background on how I initially tried to achieve what I wanted to achieve: next to my Panasonic Blu-ray, I have a Media PC (an Intel NUC) which is running Kodi mediacenter. This streams my digital movies from a NAS drive in my home network. I have a lot of digital movies with DTS sound too and I only recently found out that Kodi is able to transform multichannel audio (like DTS) to AC3 in 5.1 sound - so despite these DTS encoded movies, I can watch them via my LG BX TV (no DTS passthrough) in Dolby Multichannel 5.1 sound, transcoded by Kodi and outputted on my Sonos Beam 2.

The discussion I had on this can be found here: https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=367120

Long story short: I was somehow hoping to solve this the same way with “tweaking” my settings on the Panasonic Blu-ray and have my DTS Blu-ray discs played on my Sonos Beam 2 with “Multichannel 5.1” sound. I don’t care if it’s not “native” DTS - anything better than this crap Stereo PCM sound would be considered a success for me.

As a lot of other users, I did not pay enough attention to DTS-passthrough capabilities when I initially bought this LG TV in 2021. I only added the Sonos Beam 2 in 2022 and the Panasonic Blu-ray in 2023.

Anything else with Dolby sounds absolutely great on the Beam 2, regardless if I play the source on Kodi with digital media or via Blu-ray discs on the Panasonic. It’s just that DTS on my discs are giving me a headache that I couldn’t figure out on my setup yet...

No as I mentioned I only noticed it when I replayed Divergent and noticed I was getting a decent surround experience. It was a DTS-X track and for some reason they seem to get bit more volume in the surrounds so it was quite noticeable.

I’m not sure but I think they added support for LPCM around that time so they might have added support for this as well. If I remember people were surprised LPCM wasn’t already supported and agitated for it? Someone else might remember more. 

Thank you @Silverthorn for all your feedback! Appreciate your input. Quick update: I decided to buy a HDFury Arcana to split up Audio & Video from my devices (MediaPlayer, Blu-ray, Gaming Console, ...) and have the raw Audio signal sent straight to the Sonos Beam 2 to get “proper” DTS. I got tired with all the tweaks and fiddling in settings which in the end does not achieve the same result as getting 100% clear DTS on my Beam 2 when e.g. watching Blu-rays.

Penny-pinching LG to blame who did not want to pay the license fees to DTS and supporting DTS passthrough in their TVs (at least the models from the past years). I got the Arcana for a very good price and bought it 2nd hand/used on eBay - looking forward to try this out soon.

Anyway, again thanks for all the feedback and help until this point!

Just spent the last 2 hours reading all these posts to understand all the obstacles that we can face while trying to get the best possible audio experience with the Sonos Arc.

My setup provides me with Dolby Digital 5.1 output from the Apple TV (not the 4K model) for Netflix, Amazon Prime, Crave, Apple TV+. My TV provider (Bell Fibe in Canada) also gives me Dolby Digital 5.1 on the Sonos Arc as well as the Nintendo Switch.

The only device that isn't able to give me anything else that Stereo PCM was my BluRay player (Sony BDP-6500) which I just upgraded to the Sony BDP-X700 thinking that it would solve the problem... It didn't!

My TV is the LG65EG9600 which doesn't have eARC, port 2 is ARC only. All my devices are on a HDMI switch and the output goes to HDMI port 1. The Sonos ARC is connected to HDMI port 2 to get the ARC capabilities.

I checked the supported formats for that TV model on the rtings Web site and it seems to be able to support both DTS and Dolby Digital in 5.1 Passthrough. I want to be able to get something better than 2.0 PCM but I'm not sure if my only option is to buy an audio extractor like the HD Fury or an equivalent.

My HDMI switch is from EZCOO but doesn't do the audio extraction. They do have another device that does this which I could put in between the Sonos and the LG TV a bit like the Arcana…

Any suggestions before I go and add another device in the audio chain for the BD player? 

This is the EZCOO switch with eARC Audio Extraction that I'm looking at right now

https://www.easycoolav.com/products/4k-120hz-hdmi-21-switch-switch-4x1-earc-audio-extractor-vrr-allm-switcher

Great thread. I tried to fix that exact problem and spent hours (stretched over a couple of days) trying to fix this issue. ARC & 2022 LG OLED & Panasonic player. As a bonus I have all stuff running through a Marantz Cinema 70S AV receiver - using it as HDMI switch. Makes things even more complicated. After reading all of this I tried using my PS5 as UHD player. Runs through the Marantz to the LG TV and then to my ARC. 

Using the Panasonic player: 2.0 PCM. 

Using the PS5: 7.1 PCM (but no Dolby Vision etc) 

Should have tried this earlier… it’s a decent compromise for now, I guess and hope the next soundbar from Sonos will support DTS:X. 
 

Thanks everyone who contributed. Really helpful. 
As a bonus I have a new problem now: since tonight and since running the new setup my WiFi keeps breaking down. Once I turn off the ARC it comes back. Haha. Welcome to hell. 

You might want to check your telly on rtings dot com. check the audio section. I would have thought it would pass on a DTS signal or a LPCM signal from your panasonic.

My telly won’t pass on a DTS 5.1 signal to my Playbase unfortunately but I hope to replace it later this year most likely with an LG.

Thanks. I tried - it‘s the 8K Z2 (OLED 77Z29LA) but I can‘t seem to find it. As it works with the PS5 (and doesn‘t with my Panasonic UHD player) I assumed it’s not the TV. But yeah, LOTS of settings to cross check. 

Rtings doesn't have that but picking a random 2022 LG which turned out to be an entry level one it looks like it has support for LPCM passthrough but not for DTS.

https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/lg/qned80-2022

Just wanted to update my previous post I made since I now have the Arcana installed last night and made a few “DTS tests” from some of my local sources (Blu-ray Player, Mediaplayer/Kodi).

Haven’t found the time yet due to personal reasons, but I can confirm that the Arcana works great and that my stupid LG TV is now no longer “blocking” DTS coming through to my Beam 2 Soundbar. It’s exactly what I got the Arcana for and the DTS sounds great on the Beam 2. Been happy so far!

So does the arcana sort out the Pan820 > LG > beam 2, DTS:X disc issue?

For anyone curious, I managed to get this working for DTS-HD pass-through on an LG C series (9), with Arc, sub and two play 3's as surrounds (I also have a Phillips Hue sync box working as a HDMI switch) by using following settings:

• On Panasonic UB820:

- all audio set to "bitstream"

- secondary audio "off"

• On LG C Series:

- Audio set to pass-through

- eArc set to "off" 

Result is Sonos outputs at DTS 5.1

It was as easy as just toggling eARC to "off" for it to kick in.

Hope this helps anyone still struggling with DTS-MD.

​​​​​​

Did not want to start yet another thread about Sonos and DTS support, so posting here experiences with my new Sonos setup consisting of Arc Ultra soundbar, 2 x Era 300 acting as surrounds (with plans on adding Sub 4 to the setup down the road.) 

I got the Arc Ultra connected with my PC , Panasonic DP-UB820 player and Epson TW6700 projector with Feintech VAX04101 HDMI eARC Pass Switch, which I got working after some self-induced cable connecting issues - should have read Feintech’s installation guides more carefully from the get go *facepalm* . But additionally I made the mistake of trusting Mr. GPT regarding the DTS support with Arc Ultra, as AI still claimed few weeks back that the Ultra ARC would support DTS HD Master Audio codec, which it evidently does not. Thanks to forum posts here I learned about the Panasonic UB820’s Digital Audio Output setting and that one can output DTS as PCM. This works as advertised and I am getting PCM 5.1 and 7.1 audio from my Blu-ray with DTS HD MA tracks. 

But as many others have stated it before, I have tough time grasping why Sonos has not introduced full fledged support for all DTS codecs, especially now with their latest top of the line Soundbar, Arc Ultra. Most likely something to do with licensing, but if you are reading this Sonos, add one more customer vote for bringing full DTS support for your products!   

Good to know LPCM worked okay. Looking to upgrade my TV and eventually my Playbase.